The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1887-09-29
'SCONSET By THE SEA-:
PRENTICE MULFoRp ON A PHASE or
WATERING PLACE LIFE.
summer Camps Along the Atlantic Sea-
shore-Quiet Charm Of Nantuoket-Iife

Summer Camps Along the Atlantic Sea-
shore-Quiet Charm Of Nantucket-Life
in the Cottage-Quiet and Unpreten.
tious Enjoyment-Hotel Life.
There is a great change going on as re-
CARDS the manner of life at the watering
places on the Atlantic seaboard. 1t COM
menced some fifteen or twenty years ago,
when the seaside camp meeting system
begun and the Methodists and Baptists
first caught the idea that they could con-
bine religion, health, q wrestle with the
ocean and q protracted meeting at one and
the same time. That led to the estab-
lishment of the great UNCONVENTIONAL and
religious summer camps at Ocean Grove
and Asbury Park, just below Long
Branch on the Jersey coast, Cottage City
on Martha's Vineyard, where one.third OF
the Rev. De Witt Talmage's congregation
have recently been rusticating and swim
ming, and several other smaller camps.
The Spiritualists also tumbled to this
fact, and are now every summer located
thousands strong at Onset bay on the
Massachusetts, coast and Lake Pleasant in
the interior Of that state, where they live
in tents or cheap cottages and receive
communications Of all sorts through their
mediums from the higher and lower
heavens. In fact, this summer seaside
camping is extending and gradually fill
ing llp every convenient point on the At
.Iantic coast from Maine to Maryland.
.er ALONG THE SHORE.
TWENTY-FIVE years ago the south shore
of Long Island was little occupied in this
way. Today there is almost q continuous
string of summer cottages, hotels and
club houses from Brooklyn to the COM
mencement Of the peninsula Of Montauk.
The sporting clubs especially are apt to
take large slices of land, and as in cases
they have bought it cheap, theirs. is likely
to prove good investment Besides, it
is becoming more and more "the thing
for every city man who makes any pre-.
tension to style to have his summer cot
tage somewhere, though it be no more
than tent with board floor or o house
wooden as to frame and covered with cot
ton drilling, like those we used to run up
in the mines, and in which we added to
the commercial prosperity Of the state OF
California by drinking corn whisky and
piling the empty bottles in cords without
the door.
A yearly increasing number of people
who visit the seaside during the summer
have come to discard the hotel and take
to the cheaper and more informal cottage.
They hire them for the season, furnished.
Tie business of building and letting fur
nished seaside cottages is Increasing The
system is also superseding the summer
hotel. People live far cheaper and for
that matter, far more informally and
consequently easier at their cottages than
at the hotels They do not need to dress
FOE dinner or other occasions two or three
times day. They bring with them their
own help, buy their own provisions, cook
their own meals, invite what friends they
may without much additional expense,
homes, walk down to the beach in their
bathing suits and walk back again drip
ping wet. This kind of life brings people
Of unnecessary stiffness. The people who
so live arc by no means always those of
limited means. In Underhill's system Of
relatively cheap furnished cottages here
at Siasconset, he has among his tenants
even New York lnillionaires, who take re-
spectively for the summer little one
storied, many chambered houses, which
cost him, furnished, from 5000 to 81, 200
apiece They are neatly and tastefully
supplied with beds, oil necessary table and
cooking furniture, conveniences for wash
ing, in fact, with everything needed for
housekeeping family to pepper box, and
rent from 500 to $500 for the season.
THE COTTAGE SYSTEM.
This cottage system is quiet and unpre-
tentious. Jtdoes not take up much space
in the fashionable seaside news column Of
the daily paper. Peter Smith, the hun
dred millionaire, and his family have ten
times more space, ink and type given him
than have 100 Of the cheap cottage resi-
dents But the mass so living in the sum-
mer by the sea is increasing, and it in
wolves the best intelligence and sound
common sense Of the land, who do not
come into the country to repeat the form
ality of the city, and who can exist with
out sitting daily at an expensive hotel
table, on which must be all possible kinds
of meat, fish and game, for which earth,
air and water have been ransacked; where
one half the food, despite the style in
which it is served, has lost its freshness
from oyermuch refrigeration OF absorption
of the conglomerate odors and favors
amid which 1t Is cooked in the great hotel
kitchen-meals served with all the FORM
atty of high mass, and where you are
tyrannized by an attendant demon Of
French or colored waiter, who 'ssizes up''
your style in thirty seconds, and is atten-
tive in proportion to the fee you occa-
sionally slip into his palm, while you are
paying the landlord 81 a day exclusive Of
extras, and nm extra charge for an orange
threatened if you want to eat 1t in your
room when you have an appetite for it.
Of course, there are people who like this
style of living, and they should be graft
fed, and am glad they are gratifed, for
do love to see my fellow creatures, male,
female or otherwise, enjoying life in their
own way and as nature had formed them
to enjoy life. Moles best love existence
under ground, rats in sewers, mosquitoes
In gwamps, and some people require more
style than they do good bread and butter,
and breathe in certain sustenance and
satisfaction in living up to the dress
parade and formality of the fashionable
watering place hotel, just as peacock is
made to feel happier and better by spread
ing his magnificent tail feathers or in see
ing its brother peacoclks spread theirs
around it. This is O varied world, and
varied human and inhuman nature all
about US, and everything and everybody
have their places and uses.-Prentice Null
ford in San francisco Chronicle.
.--
"A Novel Tobosgan Slide.
nl,arn 10 On ,,iarr nt tha American OF.